February 20th Newsletter

Author

Da Yu
February 20, 2026

As of close on February 19th, 2026

Fresh from this morning, U.S. Q4 GDP rose just 1.4% as inflation held at 3%, reinforcing a higher-for-longer backdrop. On tariffs, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6-3 that Donald Trump overstepped under IEEPA, putting roughly $130B of collections in focus, while steel and aluminum duties remain. The U.S. posted a $901.5B 2025 trade deficit—down just 0.2% despite tariffs under Donald Trump—with December’s gap at $70.3B and persistent shortfalls versus the EU ($218.8B), China ($202.1B), and Mexico ($196.9B) led deficits as imports rose to $4.33T In tech, Amazon surpassed Walmart Inc. in annual revenue ($717B vs. $713.2B). Separately, investor scrutiny is intensifying: Microsoft is –17% YTD (–$613B), Amazon has shed $343B, and peers slide amid demands for clearer AI monetization. In Washington, the United States Department of Defense may cut ties with Anthropic. Consumer platforms show resilience—TikTok retained most U.S. users post-JV transition, Apple Inc. expanded creator monetization, and Amazon paused Blue Jay robotics after 1M deployments—while the Seattle Seahawks launched a sale process reportedly exceeding $7B after their 2026 Super Bowl win.

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 💰 Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund-owned Humain invested $3B in xAI’s $20B round, gaining ~0.24% of the merged SpaceX entity, deepening Saudi AI ambitions and regional sovereign competition. Read more on Bloomberg.

[2] 🌍 World Labs raised $1B, including $200M from Autodesk, to integrate its 3D world models into CAD workflows, targeting entertainment and advancing neural CAD–driven spatial AI. Info on TechCrunch.

[3] 🧩 Meta will deploy millions of AI chips from Nvidia, including standalone Grace CPUs and Vera Rubin GPUs, under a multibillion-dollar deal tied to Meta’s $135B 2026 AI capex and $600B U.S. data center expansion. More from Nvidia.

[4] 🔎 OpenAI told U.S. lawmakers that China’s DeepSeek bypassed safeguards to distill U.S. models, alleging systematic efforts to replicate frontier AI, escalating Washington’s concerns over China’s rapid AI catch-up. Details on Reuters.

[5] 🤖 Apple is accelerating three AI wearables: a camera-equipped AI pendant, N50 smart glasses targeting 2027 release, and upgraded AI-enabled AirPods, deepening competition with Meta and Snap. More from TechCrunch.

✨Open Source AI Development

[1] 🦞 OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joined OpenAI to drive next-gen personal agents after viral assistant hype. OpenClaw became an open-source foundation project supported by OpenAI; Steinberger said impact beats building a company. See more on TechCrunch.

[2] 🦞 Kimi Claw, built on OpenClaw within Moonshot AI’s ecosystem, offers 24/7 AI automation with long-term cloud memory, 5,000+ skills, 40GB storage, real-time research, and multi-channel workflows, currently in Beta for medium and high-tier subscribers. Take a look here.

[3] 👁️ Alibaba unveiled Qwen3.5, pitching it as an “agentic AI” model with 60% lower inference cost and 8× higher large-workload throughput vs its prior version, plus visual agentic action-taking across mobile/desktop apps. It claims benchmark wins over GPT-5.2, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro, as China’s race heats up after ByteDance’s Doubao 2.0 and ahead of an expected DeepSeek launch. More on Qwen.

[4] 💬 Cohere launched Tiny Aya, a 3.35B-parameter open-weight multilingual model covering 70+ languages, optimized for local deployment; it targets balanced performance across underrepresented regions using efficient training on 64 H100 GPUs. More on Cohere.

[5] 💰 Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke raised a record $60M seed at $300M valuation for Entire, an open-source AI dev tool managing agent-generated code via Git-compatible databases and semantic reasoning layers. Details on TechCrunch.

Founder’s Corner

Tech IPOs: Older, Rarer, and Far Less Profitable

Source: X

What We Read This Week

  • OpenAI hired Charles Porch, ex-Instagram VP, as first VP of global creative partnerships to woo Hollywood, expand Sora licensing (following $1B Disney deal), and ease AI labor tensions. (Vanity Fair)

  • Perplexity AI is phasing out chatbot ads, warning they erode trust. Rivals diverge: OpenAI tests ChatGPT ads, while Anthropic rejects them. Perplexity pivots to enterprise and subscription revenue. (Gizmodo)

  • Airbnb says AI now handles 1/3 of North American customer support, targeting 30% globally. CEO Brian Chesky touts cost and quality gains; Q4 revenue hit $2.78B, beating estimates. (TechCrunch)

  • Meta will deploy $65M via four super PACs in Texas and Illinois to back AI-friendly lawmakers, seeking to curb state regulations threatening data centers and broader artificial intelligence expansion. (New York Times)

  • The Walt Disney Company sent a cease-and-desist to ByteDance over alleged copyright infringement in Seedance 2.0. Disney claims unauthorized use of Marvel and Star Wars IP, escalating Hollywood’s AI crackdown. (Axios)

  • Etsy will sell Depop to eBay for $1.2B cash, below its $1.62B purchase price, refocusing amid slowing growth; Depop hit $1B GMS in 2025. (TechCrunch)

  • Snap Inc. is testing Creator Subscriptions, letting creators charge $4.99–$19.99 monthly and keep ~60% of revenue, as CEO Evan Spiegel pushes recurring income beyond ads amid slowing user growth. (CNBC)

  • Canva hit $4B ARR in 2025, fueled by 265M MAUs, AI tools adoption, and LLM referral traffic; B2B ARR doubled to $500M, as the company pivots toward an AI-first design platform. (TechCrunch)

  • Robinhood is raising $1B via a Robinhood Ventures Fund I, a closed-end fund giving retail investors access to pre-IPO shares of private firms like Databricks, Stripe, Oura, and Revolut, trading Feb. 26. (Bloomberg)

AI Fundraising News (Feb 13 — Feb 19)

  • Ando: AI workforce forecasting and scheduling tools company, raised a $4M Seed

  • Anterior: AI healthcare admin automation company, raised $40M

  • Autosana: AI quality assurance testing automation company, raised $3.2M

  • Avantos: AI financial services automation company, raised a $25M Series A

  • Braintrust: AI model evaluation and monitoring company, raised an $80M Series B

  • Bracket: AI treasury and FX automation platform company, raised a $7M Seed

  • Breaker: AI voice-controlled autonomous systems company, raised a $6M Seed

  • Certivo: AI supply chain compliance automation company, raised a $4M Seed

  • ChipAgents: AI chip design automation company, raised $50M

  • Circuit: AI manufacturing and service enterprise platform company, raised $30M

  • Cogent Security: AI vulnerability remediation automation company, raised a $42M Series A

  • Cydelphi: AI digital forensics and ransomware response company, raised a $3M Seed

  • Dataro: AI nonprofit fundraising analytics company, raised a $14.3M Series A

  • Didero: AI manufacturing procurement automation company, raised a $30M Series A

  • Efficient Computer: AI energy-efficient processor company, raised a $60M Series A

  • Electric Twin: AI audience modeling and simulation platform company, raised $12.6M

  • Ever: AI used EV marketplace platform company, raised a $31M Series A

  • Fractal: AI data analytics company, raised $313M IPO

  • FreeForm: AI-native metal 3D printing company, raised a $67M Series B

  • Fyld: AI infrastructure fieldwork automation company, raised a $41M Series B

  • Grotto AI: AI apartment leasing coach company, raised a $10M Seed

  • Heron Power: AI data center power hardware platform company, raised a $140M Series B

  • Heywa Labs: AI adaptive visual interface platform company, raised a $5M Seed

  • Ineffable Intelligence: AI reinforcement learning systems company, raised $1B

  • Kana: AI marketing automation agents company, raised a $15M Seed

  • Koyeb: AI serverless app deployment platform company, raised $8.6M

  • Lassie: AI pet insurance automation platform company, raised a $75M Series C

  • Legora: AI legal document review platform company, raised $400M

  • Lightworks: AI agent governance and security company, raised $12M

  • Maestro AI: AI mortgage origination automation company, raised a $1.2M Pre-Seed

  • Manufact: AI agent infrastructure connectivity platform company, raised a $6.3M Seed

  • Onshore: AI tax credit automation platform company, raised a $31M Series B

  • Opaque Systems: AI confidential data processing platform company, raised a $24M Series B

  • Pelgo: AI career transition platform company, raised a $5.5M Seed

  • Render: AI application cloud infrastructure platform company, raised a $100M Series C extension

  • Santé: AI retail operations automation platform company, raised $7.6M

  • Selector: AI network monitoring and operations company, raised a $32M Series B

  • Selector Software: AI network monitoring and troubleshooting company, raised $32M

  • Simile: AI human behavior prediction company, raised $100M

  • Sphinx: AI compliance automation agents company, raised a $7.1M Seed

  • Stacks: AI accounting workflow automation company, raised a $23M Series A

  • Stanhope AI: AI brain-inspired robotics systems company, raised an $8M Seed

  • SurrealDB: AI-native multi-model database company, raised a $22.5M Series A

  • Talkiatry: AI psychiatric care platform company, raised a $210M Series D

  • Temporal: AI workflow orchestration platform company, raised $300M

  • Terra Industries: AI-enabled autonomous defense systems company, raised $22M

  • The Compression Company: AI satellite data compression software company, raised a $3.4M Pre-Seed

  • Toyo: AI agent cloud platform company, raised a $4.3M Seed

  • Uptiq: AI financial services workflow automation company, raised a $25M Series B

  • Vestwell: AI-enabled digital savings and retirement platform company, raised $385M Series

  • Vybe: AI internal app generation platform company, raised a $10M Seed

  • World Labs: AI 3D virtual environment generation company, raised $1B